Baseball Hitting Stance – The Hands

How to Place Your Hands in Your Hitting Stance

So as in our previous lesson, we talked about the baseball hitting stance. In this lesson I want to talk to you about where our hands should be. We talked about where our feet, our chest, our legs should be in our stance. Where our weight should be distributed, but let’s talk about where our hands should be. There’s a lot of places we can put our hands and there’s a lot of places we don’t want to have our hands. We want to find a place that’s going to give us the best chance to succeed.

Let’s be honest, hitting’s difficult. We got a round bat, trying to hit a round ball, being thrown at us extremely hard and we don’t know at what speed it’ going to come at. This is a difficult game. This is a difficult part of the game. So we want to put ourselves in the best chance we have to succeed. When we talk about where we want our hands, let me give you some guides.

First off, let’s go right off our back shoulder. We want to have a little space in here. We don’t want our hands too tight to our body. We don’t want them too far away. These are extremes. These are going to lead to other problems. We want right off our back shoulder. We want our hands basically stacked above our back leg. Use those guides right there. We’re above our back leg. We’re right off of our back shoulder. Take a look at my bat. We basically want to have it at a 45 degree angle. If we have our bat pointed straight up, this is going to lead to problems with our swing looping. If we lay our bat too flat, we’re going to have a problem with wrapping the bat around our head, also creating length.

So keep this bat at about a 45 degree angle. We’re right off our back shoulder. This is a good place to start from. Yes you’re going to tinker with your hands. Don’t have them too low. This is going to lead to problems trying to get ready. We always got to get back to the same position before we swing. Every hitter will start his swing from the same position, right here. So we might as well start closer to that position. Let’s make this easier on ourselves. This game’s difficult enough.

So give yourself a chance. Have the bat around a 45 degree angle, right off our back shoulder, stacked above our back leg. Right there, that’s comfortable right there. You can move it around. You can be comfortable right in this position. This is going to give us the best chance to succeed most often. So the next time you get in the box, don’t hold your bat up straight. Don’t lay it down too flat. Find a nice spot for it right off your back shoulder and have a great game.